The impact that Journey to the West has had on the world since its publication is…staggering. I don’t think I would be overstating things to say that most (if not all) modern manga/anime have been directly influenced by Journey to the West…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
April 20, 2010 – 12:00 am
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Posted in A+, Reviews
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Also tagged 4GCN, Art, Chinese, Classic, Comic, Controversial, Cover, Epic, Fantasy, Long, Poetry, Translation, Worthwhile, Wu Cheng'en
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I would dearly love to give Fagunwa’s Forest of a Thousand Daemons an A+, but the nature of the story simply will not allow it…
The Magic Mountain, much like Oblomov, is a dangerous book. What Mann does with this novel of little action that moves at a snail’s place is illustrate just how easily one’s life, one’s youth, one’s livelihood can slowly but surely slip away…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
July 11, 2009 – 12:00 am
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Posted in A-, Reviews
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Also tagged Art, Classic, Comic, Experimental, German, Long, Thomas Mann, Translation, War, Worthwhile
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Beyond Good and Evil is a philosophical text, and a unique one. It’s uniqueness can only be appreciated if you’ve read every philosophical text written prior to Beyond Good and Evil, as well as the rest of Nietzsche’s work. I can proudly claim that I…haven’t read any of that. At all. Like, ever…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
July 5, 2009 – 12:00 am
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Posted in B-, Reviews
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Also tagged Classic, Comic, Controversial, Experimental, Friedrich Nietzsche, German, Non-Fiction, Offensive, Poetry, Pop, Translation, XIX
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The Communist Manifesto reads like something that came out of the 19th century. I myself have never been to the 19th century, but I swear, it seems like anyone could get anything published, so long as it was non-fiction and pompous…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
February 17, 2009 – 12:00 am
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Posted in C-, Reviews
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Also tagged Classic, Controversial, Frederick Engels, German, Karl Marx, Non-Fiction, Short, Translation, XIX
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Undoubtedly, you’ve heard of The Neverending Story, and have heard of it because of the movie. The movie, in its own way, is a classic of the fantasy film genre of the 1980s (whose king, of course, is Labyrinth), and is quite enjoyable, but it differs in a couple key ways…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
December 26, 2008 – 12:00 am
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Posted in A, Reviews
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Also tagged Classic, Experimental, Fantasy, German, Graphic, Juvenile, Michael Ende, Pop, Translation, Worthwhile
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Orlando: A Biography (and I’ve left it’s secondary title in there since it was evidently important to the author) is a new style of biography. Woolf takes as her subject the character Orlando, and writes a kind of biography the world had never seen up to that point…
Post by David J. Peterson Posted on
December 2, 2008 – 12:00 am
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Posted in A, Reviews
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Also tagged Art, Classic, Comic, Controversial, English, Experimental, Short, Virginia Woolf, Worthwhile
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The action of The Castle, Kafka’s longest work, is superb, but the major shortcoming of this novel is what makes it long: the endless, detailed conversations between characters…
Skinny Legs and All is, without a doubt, Tom Robbins’ best novel, and is well worth reading. If you read nothing else by Tom Robbins, read this book. I highly recommend it…
Thomas Pynchon has a unique writing style that stretches the boundaries of grammaticality, at times. To me, it’s annoying, but since it’s unique, a given reader is just as likely to respond positively to it as negatively, so I’ll leave it at that…